"In my role I spent quite a lot of time with the actors," said Oscar and Bafta-winning producer Claire Jennings, who was invited to work on the film by Nick Park. "Helena is just absolutely lovely. She so wanted to be Lady Tottingham. Once, she brought a pair of false teeth from when she was in the Plant of the Apes. We tried that because her character needed to have a certain sort of lisp in her voice," said Claire. "Although we didn't eventually use those tracks, that was the kind of thing we tried out. Ralph Fiennes was fantastic too. Apparently his oldest brother is a game keeper so it was quite interesting that he had that to draw from for his character." | "For a Hollywood studio having a cast of voice artists who were predominantly around 80-years-old wasn't something they would have done" | | Claire Jennings film producer |
Claire has been producing television series and short films for more than 15 years - some of which were in competition with shorts made by Aardman, a situation Claire describes as "healthy fun". Despite only seeing the scripts four weeks before starting work on the film, Claire's job was to ensure Nick's creative vision was made into the film as closely as possible. "Because we were working with Dreamworks, which is a big Hollywood studio and their culture is different from ours, my job was to steer that vision through to the end, keeping it true to Nick's original," she said. Differences manifested themselves starkly when it came to the age of the people Nick Park and Steve Box had chosen for the roles. "The Americans were supportive of us making a very British film but sometimes they just couldn't quite get what we were trying to do," said Claire. "For a Hollywood studio, having a cast of voice artists who were predominantly around 80-years-old wasn't something they would have done." Claire also had to watch how the money was spent to ensure millions were not disappearing where they were not supposed to go. Wow factor "I'm the voice of the director - the business voice - they (Nick and Steve) are incredibly creative people so you don't want to keep pulling them out to discuss business." The Curse of the Were Rabbit is the longest film Claire has worked on, but her pedigree made her the obvious choice for Nick Park. "One film I produced won an Oscar three years ago," said Claire. "It was a short film called Father and Daughter, an animation by Dutch animation director Michael Dudok de Wit - he's in the Nick category of directors and it won the Bafta that year too." Not one to blow her own trumpet, Claire is none-the-less animated when it comes to reliving her wow moment from the 80-minute movie. "When I saw the rushes - which we do every morning - and when I saw the were rabbit leaping from the ground onto the top of Tottington Hall I couldn't believe how amazing it looked. It looked great in the studio but on the screen it was a big wow," she explained. "I've seen the film about 10 times now and I still really enjoy watching it and that's quite unusual. I do really still like it." | 
